Dark Roasted Blend posted this image, suggesting that the facehugger might actually be a pacifier. Sadly, it’s just a plush toy (available here if you can’t live without one).

As awesome as a facehugger pacifier might be–and I suppose you could install one in the plush toy’s belly if you were really gung-ho about the idea–we can at least console ourselves that the Vampire Fang pacifier is a reality.

Here’s a cute diversion for long car rides: The Monster Magnet Tin by Mudpuppy has more than forty monster illustrated parts to mix and match into your own hideous creations. It includes four reversible backgrounds with scenes like haunted houses and alien planets, and the tin is just the right size for stacking backgrounds and monsters.

It goes without saying that these would also be cute stuck to the refrigerator.

Mudpuppy doesn’t seem to have its own Website but there are several places you can buy the magnet set, including here and here. The tin runs about $14.

Update: Susan was kind enough to point out in the comments that Mudpuppy does have its own Website; I’m not sure why Google failed me on that one.

(via BoingBoing)

Comedy musician/Filker Tom Smith has taken the traditional song I Had a Cat… and done something dark and horrible with it.

His version is quite wonderful, with in-jokey references to horror and SF movies, and the music is infectious; Shadowboy has begged me to play this over and over and over and over….

You can download it in a low-res format for free, or high-res for $.99. Or you can just play it a zillion times online, which is where we’re at right now.

Link (Hat tip to SeaJade)

I keep running across references to this lamp based on Marcel Dzama’s Saddest Ghost painting (I’d have to say “loosely based”). Everyone coos how perfect it would be for a child’s room and how inexpensive it is. Perfect it may be, but they are apparently using a very different scale for “inexpensive” than the one used here at Shadow Manor because the cheapest I’ve found it is $150. I don’t plan to give Shadowboy décor worth $150 until two years after his shoe size stops changing.

For something a little cheaper, try the Mathmos Ghost, a softly-glowing lamp that “morphs” through several colors ($50), or the adorable Spöka from Ikea ($14.99).

You can also get crafty and paint or decoupage a regular lampshade with ghostly images, either for your baby bat’s room or as a decorative table lamp anywhere.

Instructables user steampunk_rocker made a hanging mobile for her little niece out of felt bats. This looks like a cute, easy project to liven up (so to speak) a child’s room. I like that each of her bats has a bell hanging from its rear; who could ever be put off by Jingle Bats?

Link (Hat tip to Gory Corey)

Heather “Danger” Hard of the AntiCraft knitted this adorable baby hat, and has provided full instructions. I like that you can optionally include a red hourglass or brown fiddle if you want your baby’s hat to be something really toxic.

Link (via CRAFT)

(p.s.: Note new category, “Bittens,” for baby projects. I realize that baby bats are properly called “pups,” but I think “bitten” is cuter and it’s my blog. So there.)

A bit too late for Christmas, but if you’re looking for some unusual board games to play at an upcoming gathering, Wired has a pretty neat list.

Fiji
Rio Grande Games, two to five players, ages 10 and up, $30

Buy it for: The mastermind

You play: A souvenir hunter with little respect for the dead

The object: Amass a large, unsettling collection of shrunken heads.

I’m really quite taken with a couple of these, particularly Ra and Battlelore. Although the latter may be just because I like the image of ostrich-riding goblins.

Link

Just in case you ever need to become fully awake at 3 a.m., allow me to share my method:

1. Have a small child awake shrieking from some sort of Nightmare Extravaganza with SurroundSound.
2. Stumble into his room and spend quite a long time calming and reassuring him. When he’s finally asleep, lurch back to bed.
3. Juuust as your eyes are beginning to close, hear him crying hysterically and begging for you.
4. When you stagger back into his room, have him look up at you with wide, terror-filled eyes and whisper despairingly, “Mommy…she’s out.”

I can guarantee that having a bucket of ice water dumped over your head will awaken you no more thoroughly.* With the hair on my neck standing straight up, I asked him who, exactly, was out.** “She” turned out to be one of his stuffed bears (he has a mommy bear and a baby bear), whose head was poking out from under his covers instead of being completely buried the way that he prefers. The rest of the hysteria was just leftover nightmare droppings. I had no problem sitting for a while and keeping him company; lord knows I wasn’t going back to sleep any time soon.

(Also, why does even the most mundane sentence sound a hundred times creepier when uttered by a small child?)

Children. An endless source of entertainment. Also terror.


*I don’t believe in ghosts, except at 3 o’clock in the morning, when I totally believe in them.

**And they’re probably those Japanese ghosts with pale skin and long hair and Big Goddamn Fangs. Not that I’m projecting.

This has nothing to do with crafting or decor, other than the fact that I find him both crafty and decorative. But it’s my blog and I can do whatever I want. So there.

This is Shadowboy, in all his three-year-old glory. The shirt is by Hot Topic, the attitude is all his. (Click the thumbnail for full size.)

Not shown, but he’s also wearing skull-and-crossbones underpants. It’s my goal to make all the ladies at daycare juuuust a little nervous.

Ragnar’s Got Your Nose is a tale of two brothers; the evil brother steals the good one’s nose and then subjects it to all manner of torture. The illustrations are very Ren-and-Stimpy.

Link (via BoingBoing)